Ummm....yeah...I'm having trouble with the rabbit attached to my reckoning thingie; and I can't twiddle the marker on the glowy pictury thing that has all the appliance thingies I use to do my tally stabs. Can you renovate it?

I'm sorry sir but the oak buttons are only made from Chinese Oak, which of course comes from China. There should have been one attached to your owner's manual. Do you still have the boxes from when you unpacked your computer? No? Well then let me order you one. It should arrive in about two weeks.

The laptop battery issue is a very logical conclusion, if you assume it works like any other battery, not realizing it is a rechargable battery.

And if rechargable it should be called an accumulator, not battery. As you say batteries are not to be recharged

Where do you get the idea that the definition of "battery" includes the idea that it cannot be re-charged? Manufacturers have been producing "rechargeable batteries" for as long as I can remember. I own lots of devices that have rechargeable batteries. If there's some technical definition somewhere that defines a battery as not being able to be recharged, well, that's just not the definition used in casual conversation nor by the people who actually make batteries.

I love that he didn't spoil the practical joke of the keyboard that was out of "E"

Yes, but now every time she has a problem she's going to expect a new keyboard.

I inherited just such a customer long ago in the days of COBOL and 9-track tape reels. She would call up rather often and demand that I come with a tape and give her a fresh software load, because her old software was wearing out and causing problems. Turns out the guy before me had come up with this lazy way to get her to stop complaining for a couple weeks at a time, instead of actually looking into the errors and fixing his code.

I don't understand the one with the E's....had the E on her keyboard stopped working anyways, or had it been sabotaged some way? Even the Stooooopidest people I know would try to prove there was still plenty of E left if I told them they'd run out....\

I'm sorry sir but the oak buttons are only made from Chinese Oak, which of course comes from China. There should have been one attached to your owner's manual. Do you still have the boxes from when you unpacked your computer? No? Well then let me order you one. It should arrive in about two weeks.

Who cares about his Chinese oak buttons, I need one made of sapient pearwood, and pretty damn quickly, the weasels are getting jumpy.

People, you guys are ruining this site by sending in such obvious fakes.

Someone who doesn't know a battery can be recharged, but has no trouble figuring out how to remove it from her laptop? I guess it's as plausible as any women-are-stupid-when-it-comes-to-technology anecdote, right?

An Oak button? You know, I can imagine a beginning computer user not geting the metaphor right away, and looking for the Ok or Cancel button on the keyboard instead of the screen, but looking for a wooden key, yeah sure. Still trying to top the cup holder or the any key anecdotes I guess...

Someone who doesn't know a battery can be recharged, but has no trouble figuring out how to remove it from her laptop?

I don't know about ancient laptops (as in the story) but on many newer ones it's a lot easier to remove the battery than, say, on a battery-operated radio or something. There's one or two thingies that you slide and it just pops out, often with text or an icon next to them telling you what they release.

Someone who doesn't know a battery can be recharged, but has no trouble figuring out how to remove it from her laptop? I guess it's as plausible as any women-are-stupid-when-it-comes-to-technology anecdote, right?

And if rechargable it should be called an accumulator, not battery. As you say batteries are not to be recharged

Here in America, everybody calls an accumulator in a car "a battery".

Not just in America, pretty much everywhere they speak English.

The funny thing is, though, that in Dutch you would 'accu' for a car battery, and 'accuboormachine' for an electric drill with a rechargeable battery, but 'oplaadbare batterij' (you guessed it, rechargeable battery) for the AA/AAA kind of rechargeable batteries that you would put into consumer electronics or toys. Which proves yet again that English isn't the only f-upped language out there.

As for wooden keyboards, they do exist, although not necessarily made of oak, and not necessarily affordable. Made by a Japanese who's been meditating in a cave for the last 50 years kind of thing.